It never quite happened for Will Wheaton, did it?
After shooting to fame in the early 80s with cult movies The Last Starfighter (1984) and Stand by Me (1985), the sky certainly seemed to be the limit for the gangly little cherub who will forever be known as Gordy Lachance, but in spite of a decent run as Wesley Crusher in cult series Star Trek: The Next Generation, his career would prove spotty at best…
Flatliners could have been so much more. In fact, in the hands of someone like an early David Cronenberg, it may have been a veritable masterpiece.
The movie’s concept is quite brilliant. Four medical students set up an experimentation lab after hours and induce death with the aim of gaining some kind of grasp on the nature of the afterlife…
“A long time ago . . . in a galaxy far, far away . . .”
For me, and many others, that ‘long time ago’ was a childhood defined by the exploits of Luke Skywalker, Han Solo and their Guardians of the Galaxy style, dysfunctional group of androids, wookies, rapscallions and royalty. That single line also exemplifies the ‘Once Upon a Time’ introduction of many a fairy tale as our young farm boy, who dreams of joining the rebellion, suddenly finds himself rescuing the princess and defeating the evil wizard . . .
As a movie, The Dead Zone is not without its flaws, but it proves extremely relevant in regards to today’s political climate.
Although not as high profile as many other Stephen King adaptions, it is one of most loyal in terms of how it translates to the screen, and is certainly one of the most underappreciated, in spite of its often clunky pacing and superfluous content. The movie is directed by none other than David Cronenberg, a man who has long since reached a mainstream audience, although even his more high-profile pictures could never really be classed as conventional…
Poor Kevin Reynolds.
After experiencing huge success with 1991’s Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves, he would be handed a budget of $175,000,000 to direct dystopian spectacular Waterworld, and although that sum may seem paltry by today’s standards, this was more than a quarter of a century ago, and at the time it constituted the world’s most expensive movie, a fact made so apparent in the mainstream media that the production was almost bound to fail, and in many quarters encouraged to…
A sequel that lives up to an original picture is a rare thing indeed. Even rarer is one that in some ways surpasses it, but James Cameron seems to have the formula down to a tee.
In 1991 he in many ways bested his own sci-fi epic The Terminator with Terminator 2: Judgement Day, and a few years prior he took Ridley Scott’s seminal space horror Alien and made Aliens, which for many is the superior movie of the franchise…
